BEYOND

SHELTER
ARCHITECTURE AND
HUMAN DIGNITY
EDITED BY MARIE J. AQUILINO
AQUILINO
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Beyond Shelter presents 25 reports from the field written by a wide
array of experts who are on the frontlines of disaster prevention and
recovery around the world. Together, these stories illustrate the reality
that evolving risk requires new ways of thinking, and that architects
have a leading role to play.
Why are we so unprepared after every disaster? Our reaction is more surprise
than readiness. Bad construction can worsen the crisis. Survivors and well-
meaning volunteers need experts to guide themtoward safe, long-term, locally
appropriate solutions. In the future we must do much, much more with much,
much less. The lessons in this book move us well toward that important goal.
Bryan Bell, founder, Design Corps, and editor, Expanding Architecture:
Design as Activism
Asafe, durable, and dignified home is an aspiration
of all, yet often hindered by a lack of access to the
required know-how. This valuable work champions
the need to involve the built-environment profes-
sionals and practitioners who have such expertise
on the frontlines of post-disaster and sustainable
shelter and settlement.
Graham Saunders, head, Shelter and
Settlements Department, International
Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies
Around the globe, groundbreaking work is being done by
small teams of outstanding professionals who are helping
people recover fromdisaster and rebuild homes, infra-
structure, and communities, bridging the gap that separates
short-termemergency needs fromlong-termsustainable
recovery. But this level of expertise remains concentrated in
the hands of far too fewexperts working worldwide.
Urgent questions about the architects role in disaster
prevention and recovery have arisen since 2004, when the
Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people. In
the last decade natural disasters and hazards have affected
200 million people, 98 percent of themin the developing
world, where billions of dollars in aid are absorbed annually
by climatic and geologic crises. Those in the developed
world are not immune, as extreme temper-atures and
increased flooding and droughts are expected to expose
vast numbers of people to the status of eco-refugee.
BeyondShelter presents 25generously illustratedreports
fromthe field by the leaders of many of the worlds most
provocative architecture and engineering firms and most
accomplished non-profits, research centers, and interna-
tional agencies. Robin Cross, Teddy Cruz, Sandra dUrzo,
Deborah Gans, Victoria L. Harris, John Norton, Sergio
Palleroni, Raul Pantaleo, and others provide up-to-the-
moment accounts of disaster prevention and sustainable
recovery efforts in a wide range of urban and rural locales,
including Manila, NewOrleans, Gujarat, So Paulo, Sudan,
Vietnam, Kashmir, Sierra Leone, Kansas, and Haiti.
As Patrick Coulombel, thefounder of Architectes de
lUrgence, states: Today, wearchitects must recognizeour
obligations andorganizeour strengths andtalents torespond
totheconstant, urgent crises that confront peopledisplaced
by environmental hazards andconflict. This is thechallenge
facingarchitects worldwideinthetwenty-first century.
With contributions by:
Architectes de lUrgence
Article 25 Development and Disaster Relief
Arup Associates
BaSiC Initiative
BIMStorm/Building Information Modeling
DARCH
Development Authority of Muzaffarabad, Pakistan
Administered Kashmir
Development Workshop France
cole Spciale dArchitecture, Paris
Emergency Architects Australia
Estudio Teddy Cruz
Gans Studio
Mehran Gharaati, Architect
International Federation of Red Cross and Red
Crescent Societies
National Centre for Peoples Action in Disaster, India
National Disaster Management Authority, Pakistan
Research Center for Disaster Mitigation of Urban
Cultural Heritage, Ritsumeikan University
Research School of Pacific Asia Studies, Australian
National UniversityCanberra
Studio 804
Studio TamAssociati
TAO-Pilipinas
UN-Habitat
Uplink
Urban Think Tank
World Habitat Research Centre
World Wildlife Fund
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Marie J. Aquilino is a professor of architectural history
at the cole Spciale dArchitecture (ESA) in Paris and a
specialist in contemporary urban redevelopment. At the
ESAshe is creating a programto train architecture students
to work in contexts of extreme need and crisis in the
developing world. In addition, she serves as associate
programdirector of the BaSiCInitiative and is collaborating
with the International Federation of the Red Cross to set
up a working group on the reconstruction of Haiti.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM
METROPOLIS BOOKS
The Power of Pro Bono: 40 Stories about Design for the
Public Good by Architects and Their Clients
Edited by John Cary and Public Architecture; foreword by
Majora Carter
978-1-935202-1-89
Green Patriot Posters: Images for a NewActivism
Edited by Dmitri Siegel and Edward Morris; essays by
Thomas L. Friedman, Michael Bierut, Steven Heller,
Morgan Clendaniel, Dmitri Siegel, and Edward Morris
978-1-935202-2-40
Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People
Emily Pilloton; foreword by Allan Chochinov
978-1-933045-9-55
Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses
to Humanitarian Crises
Edited by Architecture for Humanity; essays by Cameron
Sinclair and Kate Stohr
978-1-933045-25-2
Printed in Singapore
$35
EDITED BY MARIE J. AQUILINO
METROPOLIS BOOKS
BEYOND
SHELTER
ARCHITECTURE AND
HUMAN DIGNITY
PART 4: ENVIRONMENTAL RESILIENCE
172 Green Recovery Anita van Breda and Brittany Smith
184 The Home as the World: Tamil Nadu
Jennifer E. Duyne Barenstein
196 Design as Mitigation in the Himalayas
Francesca Galeazzi
210 On Beauty, Architecture, and Crisis: The Salam Centre
for Cardiac Surgery in Sudan Raul Pantaleo
PART 5: TEACHING AS STRATEGIC ACTION
222 Cultivating Resilience: The BaSiCInitiative
Sergio Palleroni
234 Studio 804 in Greensburg, Kansas
Dan Rockhill and Jenny Kivett
246 Sustainable Knowledge and Internet Technology
Mehran Gharaati, Kimon Onuma, and Guy Fimmers
PART 6: IS PREVENTION POSSIBLE?
252 More to Lose: The Paradox of Vulnerability
John Norton and Guillaume Chantry
264 Building Peace across African Frontiers
Robin Cross and Naomi Handa Williams
276 Haiti 2010: Reports from the Field Marie J. Aquilino
AFTERWORD
286 Open Letter to Architects, Engineers, and Urbanists
Patrick Coulombel
296 Acknowledgments
298 About the Contributors
304 Credits
PREFACE
006 Beyond Shelter: Architecture and Human Dignity
Marie J. Aquilino
INTRODUCTION
012 The Architecture of Risk Victoria L. Harris
PART 1: ARCHITECTURE AFTER DISASTER
026 Learning from Aceh Andrea Fitrianto
040 Beyond Shelter in the Solomon Islands Andrea Nield
054 News from the Teardrop Island Sandra DUrzo
064 From Transitional to Permanent Shelter: Invaluable
Partnerships in Peru International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies
PART 2: WHAT SHOULD GOVERNMENTS DO?
070 When People Are Involved Thiruppugazh Venkatachalam
082 Citizen Architects in India Rupal and Rajendra Desai
094 What about Our Cities? Rebuilding Muzaffarabad
Maggie Stephenson, Sheikh Ahsan Ahmed,
and Zahid Amin
PART 3: URBAN RISK AND RECOVERY
112 Below the Sill Plate: New Orleans East Struggles
to Recover Deborah Gans with James Dart
126 Slumlifting: An Informal Toolbox for a NewArchitecture
Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner
140 Sustainable Communities: Avoiding Disaster in the
Informal City Arlene Lusterio
152 Camouflaging Disaster: 60 Linear Miles of Local
Transborder Urban Conflict Teddy Cruz
166 Cultural Heritage and Disaster Mitigation:
A New Alliance Rohit Jigyasu
CONTENTS
Two hundred million people (thats two-thirds of the population
of the United States) have been affected by natural disasters
and hazards in the last decade. For every person who dies,
some 3,000 are left facing terrible risks. Ninety-eight percent
of these victims are in the developing world, where billions of
dollars in aid are absorbed annually by climatic and geologic
crises. Nowwe are learning that extreme temperatures,
intense heat waves, increased flooding, and droughts due to
climate change are expected to expose vast numbers of
people to the status of eco-refugee, a condition that poses a
real threat to human security as people are forced to migrate.
Twenty million people are currently on the move in Pakistan,
where torrents of mud and water have forced themfromtheir
homes. Experts are also finding that as these natural hazards
increase annually in frequency and severity, the ability to pro-
tect communities once thought safe will diminish, leading to
ever-greater loss of life.
In 2008 over 100,000 people died in the Chinese province
of Sichuan when buildings collapsed during an earthquake.
Among them, 19,000 school children were buried in rubble
when unsafe school buildings failed. Suddenly questions were
raised about the role of architects. Looking to assign blame,
officials turned on architects to account for what had hap-
pened, and in almost the same breath turned to architects and
engineers fromaround the world for solutions that would calm
outraged families. A fewmonths later in Myanmar a storm
surge in the low-lying, densely populated Irrawaddy River delta
called Nargis left an estimated 140,000 people dead. In Haiti
on January 12, 2010, an earthquake shook poor-quality materi-
als and construction into twenty million cubic yards of boulders
and dust, interring at least 220,570 people and leaving a million
and a half homeless. The number of children who perished has
not been published, though half the population of Port-au-Prince
was underage. Yet in an even more powerful earthquake in
Chile that same year about 500 people died. The Haiti earth-
quake, though severe, was not the only cause of so high a toll:
the other culprit was unsafe buildings.
Urgent questions about the role and responsibility of archi-
tects have been circulating since the Indian Ocean tsunami
killed more than 200,000 people in 2004. At that time the relief
effort exposed troubling gaps between humanitarian aid that
targets the short termand our ability to rebuild homes, infra-
structure, and communities well. While aid agencies are
willing, they do not have an architects knowledge or insights;
consequently, the buildings that replace destroyed communi-
ties are frequently unsafe.
Unfortunately, this is as true today as it was seven years
ago. However corrupt or appalling the politics (and policies)
behind the catastrophes in Sichuan and Haiti, professional
architectswhether in the developing or developed world
are notably absent fromefforts to protect people fromdisaster.
Yet architects have recently been very active in other areas of
public interestfor example, they have instigated a range of
creative strategies to improve social, environmental, and eco-
nomic equity, some of which have become books about how
to alter the way we think about the design process. But in
extreme circumstances, in crises, architects offer no coherent
response. They play no sustained role in shaping policy and
have had little active presence or voice in leading best practices
in disaster prevention, mitigation, and recovery. There is still no
career path that prepares students to work as urgentistes
design professionals who intervene at a crucial moment in the
recovery process to produce enduring solutions.
Which is precisely why this book is about the architects who
are helping save lives. Innovative, fascinating work is being
done by small teams of outstanding professionals in Asia, Latin
America, Africa, and the United States, who are proving to be
critical, relevant partners helping communities recover from
PREFACE
BEYOND SHELTER:
ARCHITECTURE AND
HUMAN DIGNITY
MARIE J. AQUILINO
COLE SPCIALE
DARCHITECTURE, PARIS
007
the need for efficiency, which may stifle the opportunity for
invention. Yet architects are not only skilled technicians; they
are also creative artists, and those talents are needed in such
circumstances. Fresh approaches that lessen the vulnerability
of fragile populations and strengthen their resilience and
potential will only come fromthe combined resources and
experience of these groups working collaboratively. Simply
put, we must start speaking with others.
Open and sustained debate is also needed to hold every-
one involved accountableto produce credible solutions and
coherent strategies that address the myriad problems: spatial
and environmental planning, the need for vernacular and
appropriate housing, the overwhelming scale of todays disas-
ters, preservation of cultural integrity, funding streams, and
howbest to function on the ground. There has been a tendency
in the aid community to accept massive waste as a corollary of
speed; they play down the abandoned projects, the systematic
demolition of undamaged homes, poor land choices, and envi-
ronmental degradation that routinely accompany the recovery
process. Homes have failed before anyone had a chance to
live in them, and some post-disaster settlements have led to
serious physical and mental-health problems for their newresi-
dents. The absence of expertise is a trespass that leaves
communities more vulnerable than before. The best intentions
are rarely good enough, especially if they are not scrutinized in
light of their outcomes.
Beyond Shelter is intended to help this diverse group of
decision makers understand, value, and engage architectsas
partnersin shaping principles that respond to the growing
threat of disaster risk in urban and rural settings around the
world. We cannot wait. To help re-create a decent quality of life
at scale is an enormous challenge. To meet it we must reinvest
architecture with the capacity to be a powerful, disruptive
force, a source of discovery and change.
have wide-ranging experience. In addition to their ability to erect
secure, durable structures, they are expert contract managers
capable of calculating needs, resources, and budgets through
the arc of a program. All of this helps save money and improve
humanitarian action.
Representation is the second area: architects working in
close collaboration with communities can help themact on
their own behalf. Playing the roles of designer, historian, nego-
tiator, and advocate, architects develop site alternatives that
help secure land tenure, reblock overcrowded slums, afford
better access to water, sanitation, air, and light, introduce
public spaces, and improve the relationship with the local ecol-
ogy. They can then represent community consensus on viable
projects to intransigent or indifferent governments, and this, in
turn, promotes local independence. It is terribly difficult for
communities to successfully represent their own best interests
in the face of intractable politics.
The third function is vision. Recovery extends well beyond
the need for shelter. In a state of emergency it is difficult for
desperate individuals to imagine a better future. Architectural
expertise can promote public health, encourage investing in
newskills and environmental awareness, and advocate for miti-
gating risk, which together help ensure a sustainable and safe
way of life.
But for these qualities to take hold after crises, architects
and planners must engage in a broader conversation, among
the experts in humanitarian aid, anthropologists, conservation
ecologists, bankers and economists, structural engineers,
public-health officials, surveyors, and within the context of
policy makers and communities. These groups also need to
knowwhomto turn to and where to put their confidence. And
practitionersincluding architectsmust guard against the
tendency to fall into rote responses and convenient solutions.
Industry-wide, good ideas and know-howsuccumb to habit and
Myriad organizations worldwide respond to catastrophic
events, some providing emergency and transitional shelters,
others building permanent homes for hundreds of thousands
of displaced people. In the last ten years the major interna-
tional NGOs (Oxfam, UN-Habitat, Care, Red Cross Societies,
Caritas, and others) have taken on the responsibility of prop-
erly housing people after disasters. And their efforts have led
to success stories. The International Federation of the Red
Cross nowoffers oversight and assistance to less-experienced
agencies, although only on a voluntary basis. There is still no
coordinated response. No one is ultimately held responsible
(beyond operations within individual agencies).
As a result thousands of smaller groups play a critical role
in protecting the homeless, and these vary widely in scope,
competence, approach, and effectiveness. Fewamong them
specialize in building homes or infrastructure before disaster
strikes, and rarely are they screened for expertise. Worse,
many of these groups do not have the capacity to judge the
quality of experts they employ. Ironically, the plethora of pub-
lished guides and internationally accepted standards for good
practice, intended to help professionalize the sector, can just
as well empower individuals who do not have the operational
or technical skills to work on the ground in reconstruction.
Competing mandates and donor priorities, weak coordination,
fragmented knowledge, and a blatant disregard for environmen-
tal health often characterize the failed practices that prevail after
a disaster, and that lead to newdangers as well as intolerable
waste. More than ever there is a crucial and immediate need
for architects (along with other built-environment profession-
als) to bring their training, competence, and ingenuity to
disaster-risk prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery.
Here are just three of the many ways in which architectural
know-howis critical in post-crisis situations. The first has to do
with capacity. Well-trained architects who are actively building
disaster and rebuild. The highly skilled architects and leaders
in other fields who have so generously contributed to this book
are providing resilient solutions that ensure the safety of new
homes and bring coherence to land-use planning. These teams
assess damage but also research innovative building technolo-
gies. They are at the forefront of the use of low-cost, energy-
saving, environmentally sound materials and newmethods of
prefabrication. They have discovered ways to bring affordable
high-tech solutions to vulnerable communities. These teams
are experts in howbest to bridge the gap that separates short-
termemergency needs fromlong-termsustainable recovery.
And they are experienced in helping reduce future risk, pro-
mote awareness, and protect relief investment. Admittedly, this
level of expertise is rare, concentrated in the hands of far too
fewprofessionals working worldwide.
Beyond Shelter is a call to action. When I started writing this
book and searched for practicing architects skilled at working
with risk almost everyone asked me the same question: why
architects? As if to say, what is it to us? At the conference
Risques Majeurs 2008 (Major Risks 2008) sponsored by the
European Union, two or three architects were present. The offi-
cials and ministers I spoke with reminded me that on average
architects contribute to only 3 percent of the worlds built envi-
ronment. Their indifferenceor worse, irrelevanceto the
worlds most vulnerable communities made themseemhardly
worth talking about. Three percent is a terrible number.
But if not architects and planners, who is in charge of
rebuilding towns and villages leveled by earthquakes and
cyclones? The answer is disquieting: no one is in charge.
Typically, a patchwork of nongovernmental charities, govern-
ment agencies, and residents themselves cobble together
solutions. In large-scale disasters, even when aid pours in, the
expertise and planning infrastructure needed to make best use
of the money are lacking.
009
So this is also a book for students in the design fieldsto
inspire and stir a passion for reform. The urgent need to afford
the next generation of architects newrelevance has compelled
a handful of professionals to change the way we think about
architectural education. At Columbia and MIT, at schools in
Portland, San Diego, NewOrleans, Montreal, Paris, Caracas,
So Paolo, and Santiago, and at newuniversities being estab-
lished in Japan and India, students are working on projects that
revolutionize social housing, tackle poverty, segregation, and
violence in cities and rethink our response to risk. These inno-
vative programs are providing alternatives to the traditional
design studios that promote self-interest and flights of fantasy
though these qualities are not in themselves bad. Rather, when
aspiring architects are confronted with the real world, when they
test their mettle against social injustice, and especially when
they are given the opportunity to work directly with communities
in need, they drawupon honesty, life experience, and fear, which
unleash fresh insights and lead to highly creative solutions.
All of this is in our best interests. We who live in wealthy
nations are not immune fromdisasters, and we, too, struggle
with our own disinvested communities, inequalities, and poverty.
We have a lot to learn fromour poorer neighbors about dealing
with crisis at home. Learning fromextreme conditions in the
developing world is a powerful source of creativity. Evolving
risk requires newways of thinking. For instance, the emerging
use of microfinance and microinsurance, which helps increase
resilience in poor communities, is bringing newbusiness models
to affluent markets at a time when the business climate is other-
wise not favorable. Citizen-led reconstruction, an empowering
and collaborative process that supports socially equitable
development, is teaching us howto value and forge collabora-
tions and synergistic partnerships rooted in local priorities.
Streamlining costly, complex innovations has led to the devel-
opment of such clever devices as portable ultrasound readers,
LED lights, and point-of-origin water purifiers, as well as strate-
gies for a low-carbon future and greater biodiversity. The
strides being made to address poverty and scarcity are already
improving our use of technology. Similar trickle-up approaches
are being tested in education. Certainly, newways of solving
the ingrained problems that put us at risk will come froman
array of cultures, economies, and geographies that share our
desire for greater security.
What does it mean to be safe? Safety, I have learned, is not
only anchored in better technologies or better buildings. Safety
lies somewhere beyond shelter, in the freedomof being secure
enough to relax, play, aspire, and dreamfor generations.
A school in Ptionville, Haiti, after the earth-
quake of 2010. Nearly 5,000 schools were
destroyed or severely damaged.
011
IS PREVENTION
POSSIBLE?
PART 6
One of the shared lessons from our
experience in Vietnam and Myanmar is
that principles of safe, storm-resistant
construction can be quickly and easily
transferred to new communities
precisely because they can be adapted
to any local construction technique.
MORE TO LOSE:
THE PARADOX OF
VULNERABILITY
JOHN NORTON AND GUILLAUME CHANTRY
DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP FRANCE,
LAUZERTE, FRANCE
6.1
MORE TO LOSE
ORGANIZATION
DEVELOPMENT WORKSHOP FRANCE
PROJECT LOCALE
THUA THIEN HU, VIETNAM
(previous spread) In Vietnam, the house of Nha
TamVuong dai Phu Da before it was reinforced
i The house of Nha Gia Co Tho, after it was rein-
forced using DWF guidelines and raised above
flood level
The cruel paradox of vulnerability among the poor is that as one
invests morescarceresources inones homethecost of recovery
fromdamage caused by natural hazards also increasesthere
is more to lose and repairs cost more as well. This increasing
vulnerability can be reduced if families and builders integrate a
fewkey principles of hazard-resistant construction when they
build. Poor communities worldwide face risk bluntly, exposed
to repeated cycles of loss and recovery. They build on fragile,
compromised sites along fault lines and slopes and in the paths
of hurricanes and typhoons. Recovery fromthe effects of
extreme weather and climate is getting more and more expen-
sive and the need to recover more frequent. For many families
this means backsliding further into poverty.
This situation overwhelmingly characterizes conditions in
Thua Thien Hu province, central Vietnam, where Development
Workshop France (DWF) has worked for more than twenty years
to help prevent typhoon and flood damage to peoples homes
and public buildings.
1
Our long-term, intimate involvement with
some of the poorest communities on the planet has been
rewarding insofar as we have been making headway in address-
ing this innate paradox. But extreme climatic events (storms,
wind, floods, droughts) are nowoccurring with a frequency and
force that make it impossible to predict whether our current
approach will be relevant for more than a generation. We there-
foreplacegreat emphasis onconstant reassessment, adjustment,
and reviewof our methods.
In rural central Vietnam poor families have virtually stopped
building their houses out of locally gathered materialsbam-
boo, rice thatch, timber for poles. Today, they use rigid-walled
structures of cast cement brick. They make their own wall
blocks and roof tiles on-site, using cement and sand pur-
chased from small local suppliers, or buy processed building
materials at local markets. The shift to new materials and tech-
niques is almost universal, as poor communities come to
associate new building practices with a better lifestyle. But
this change in habit has never translatedin either material or
economic termsinto safer homes or more stable futures.
Buildings made in the modern mode do not withstand punish-
ing winds and water well, and the cost of recovery when a
home is damaged has gone from almost nothing to several
hundred dollars for the average family. At the same time our
experience demonstrates that risk can be avoided, especially
in zones under constant threatthe hotspots for which we lack
good practice.
Twenty-five years ago most poor rural families in central
Vietnamlived in thatched pole-frame houses, which were
easily destroyed by storms but quickly rebuilt with help from
neighbors and family. In the mid-1980s a neweconomic policy
in Vietnamchanged this. Families, though still poor, began to
have a little more disposable income, so they improved their
homes, making thembetter and strongeror so they thought.
Nearly 100 percent of the rural housing stock in the region has
been replaced in the past twenty years. Some 70 percent of
these houses will be either heavily damaged or destroyed by
the next major storm, and such storms nowcome every year.
Most Vietnamese houses are built a little at a time and are
the result of years of savings, borrowing, and the owners
own labor. The cost of building an average 375-square-foot
(35-sq.-m) house, if it were done at once (or what it would cost
a family to replace a destroyed home), is about 25 percent of a
familys extremely modest income.
2
A damaged home is there-
fore a considerable setback and can trigger a downward
financial spiral. Families risk their health, their ability to send
children to school, and even their capacity to earn a living in
order to rebuild. Some families have rebuilt their homes four
or five times in a decadea terrible effort and strain. Many
families never fully recover, but instead live at greater risk in
homes that have been poorly repaired.
Development Workshop works closely on disaster-risk
reduction with communities in Vietnam. Since 2000 we have
aggressively promoted preventionstrengthening houses and
public buildings so that they resist the impact of recurrent
floods, typhoons, and whirlwinds. Reducing the risk of damage
means that families can channel their scarce resources to
more productive uses instead of diverting themto repairs over
and again. It can be difficult to convince people with little
means that they should spend more on a safer future. Sadly,
the ultimate argument is made when a devastating cyclone
passes and only the strengthened houses are left standinga
lesson lost neither on the local people nor the authorities.
At the same time, while donor and development institutions
eagerly embrace disaster prevention, risk reduction, and miti-
gation and debate best methods, it is difficult to measure the
impact and value of prevention. Howdoes one quantify the value
of preventing death and destruction? What priority should be
allocated to prevention? It is easier to obtain funds to rebuild
one house after a disaster than to strengthen many beforehand
at the same cost.
This does not mean that reconstruction guarantees safer
buildingfar fromit. When tremendous resources are mobilized
fast, quality control and best practices may be lacking and
there is a terrible risk of rebuilding vulnerability. Yet it is during
the recovery period that disaster-risk reduction practices
should be integratedat a time when people understand the
necessity and the work can be done at lowcost. It is far more
costly to go back later to replace badly built temporary
buildings (which typically remain in place for a long time) with
better ones that do not repeat past hazardous building practices.
That is not the best way to help communities build safely.
Our approach is pragmatic and specific: we deliberately
promote generic principles of risk-resistant safe construction
that are suited to the context of a region or individual building
255
immediately. In 1998 our proposal to reinforce homes of the
poor in Thua Thien Hu was greeted with derision by provincial
authorities. Fortunately, we had already demonstrated the
advantages of safe construction techniques in a small pilot pro-
gramin the province and had long-termpartners there.
4
Our
long-termrelationship with local partners, including people in
the provincial and communal local authority structure, proved
to be a major strength. In some cases individuals who had
worked with DWF in 198990 had risen through the ranks of
local government and the official Communist Party systemand
were able to provide staunch support for our work.
In addition we work with an almost exclusively Vietnamese
teamand have very little staff turnover. Indeed, many of our key
staff in Vietnamhave worked on DWF projects for more than
ten years. This longevity affords us collective institutional
memory and a depth of local knowledge that is precious and
relatively unusual among foreign NGOs. Ten years after our
initial proposal we nowhave wide provincial backing. Families
and authorities have seen for themselves that using our Ten
Key Points is an efficient and cost-effective means to resist the
impact of typhoons and floods. Seeing is believing.
DEVELOPING A CULTURE AND
PRACTICE OF PREVENTION
The process of preventive safety practiced at DWF is broadly
based and involves many different local actors and actions. At
its heart is a straightforward message: Prevent StormDamage.
We formpartnerships with local governments and the families
whose houses will be improved. To start with, we train advisors
fromarea villages, or communes, to drawup a list of the work
that needs to be done for each house. Then we tell the family
howmuch it is going to cost. The family decides whether it can
and can be adapted to each familys needs. No two houses or
public buildings have the same weaknesses, so applying prin-
ciples rather than a specific technology is key. Moreover,
generic principles can be applied to both existing and new
structures. This is not to say that Vietnamese building regula-
tions play no part, but rather that in the predominantly
semiformal construction sector legislation is not the best route
to reach the poor and help themmake their homes safer.
Our program in central Vietnam promotes Ten Key Points
of typhoon-resistant construction. These principles highlight
specific technical safety measures: diagonal bracing, good
connections among all components of a building, the best
shape and angle of pitch for the roof, separation of high-risk
veranda roofs fromthe main roof, and firmanchoring of the
roof covering (such as tiles or corrugated-metal roofing
sheets). In addition, they point to basic rules of safe location,
good building shape, the value of doors and windows that
close securely, the importance of placing matched openings
(doors and windows) in opposing external walls so that wind
can blowthrough the building and not build up internal pres-
sure, and the benefits of planting trees as windbreaks.
3
These simple concepts can be interpreted or adapted
according to the nature of a building and its construction mate-
rials. For example, a roof made of corrugated-iron sheeting can
be held down with supplementary metal retaining strips that
run along the length of the roof, and in the case of tiled roofs,
these should be anchored with thin vertical reinforced-concrete
ribs. Ironically, these ribs were a traditional Vietnamese tech-
nique that has long been abandoned. We have helped families
strengthen more than 2,000 houses in central Vietnam; the
average cost of preventive strengthening is 15 to 30 percent
of the buildings reconstruction cost.
While preventive strengthening of homes in high-risk areas
may seeman obvious good idea, the concept was not embraced
f Ten Key Points of Cyclone Resistant
Construction: this poster, in Vietnamese, Thai,
Myanma Bhasa (Burmese), English, and other
languages, represents DWFs core principles of
good construction. It is a simple, inexpensive
tool, easily distributed.
i The original poster was drawn by a local artist
in 1989. The ten points were not only displayed
but sung.
257
village cadres (commune and hamlet leaders) participate, as
well as eighty primary-school teachers, who in turn reach
1,200 children. At the district level we train eighty construction
technicians. Overall, 100,000 people are exposed through
vigorous public-information campaigns to our Prevent Storm
Damage message.
This wall-to-wall approach is the key to generating a
common understanding of prevention among local builders
and hamlet leaders. We offer one-and-a-half-day training ses-
sions in which nearly all the builders in a commune learn about
safer construction alongside community leaders. This is the
first formal training many builders have had. They learn why
storms damage buildings and howto build for the future.
In order to emphasize the long-termvalue and savings of
preventive strengthening, DWF members actively participate in
the process, ensuring quality control. Where possible we work
on buildings that will be seen and used by many, in order to fur-
ther our educational mission. We have reinforced schools,
cultural centers, markets, and other public facilities. We have
also built kindergartens because they are similar in size to
a five-year damage-prevention action plan that covers a wide
range of kinds of work needed. DWF provides support at this
stage by helping the communes identify priorities. For example,
we build bridges, construct safe harbors for families living on
boats, and ensure safe access and escape routes. The commit-
tee also identifies the neediest families. Families are selected
democratically, by a vote organized at the hamlet level.
These activities are directed and guided by some twenty
local DWF staff based in Hu city, divided roughly into one
teamtasked to raise awareness and one with technical skills.
We have put wireless radio communication systems in place
and integrated storm-resistant construction techniques into the
government-sponsored temporary house-replacement program.
Building on this experience, DWF has encouraged the com-
munes disaster-prevention committees to work as a network,
sharingtheir knowledge, successes, andfailures withcommunes
in neighboring provinces that would like to join our program.
During a typical 15-month programwe work closely with some
12 communes, selecting approximately 550 families (or 2,750
people) to receive direct help and training; 250 builders and
to borrowfor a purpose that would not generate income, such
as prevention, precisely because it would save themmoney
later on. We also wanted to prove that very poor clients would
and could pay back their loans. In 2008 we negotiated with the
VietnamBank for Social Policy to launch a new, low-interest,
no-collateral credit product that specifically targets house
strengthening with repayment over five years. Because of its
success the DWF subsidy has largely been superseded. The
loan program, which relies on existing lending records and
borrower repayment capacity assessments and works with
each communes Peoples Committee and the Farmers and
Womens Unions, is critical to making preventive strengthen-
ing sustainable and replicable.
The Peoples Committee is the local authority in each
commune and an important partner. With it we develop a
damage-prevention committee in each district, charged with
coordinating our efforts. This is where we address the idea of
prevention for the first time in a village or town. While prepared-
ness has long been a Vietnamese strength, the prevention of
damage at the local level has not. The communes each prepare
afford the work and whether to go ahead. In the first years of
the programwe provided a subsidy to cover some of the costs,
but families have always contributed cash and labor. The aver-
age cost of strengthening a rural home is roughly $250. If a
family cannot undertake the work itself, the project will ask the
Peoples Committee, officials of the provincial government, to
help by assisting in organizing and supervising the work.
However, most families do the work themselves. More than 30
percent of the households we have assisted are headed by
widows and economic widows who have lost a husband either
to the sea or to a city in search of work.
We later discovered a drawback in our process. Follow-up
interviews revealed that families were placing so much value
on strengthening their homes that they were willing to borrow
money frommoneylenders and relatives at ridiculously high
rates of interest. This sort of borrowing causes problems down
the road. So we started a pilot programwith our partner com-
munes in 2002, using project funds (and later grants) to
provide low-interest loans for house strengthening; it ran for
two years. We wanted to demonstrate that people were willing
ff A DWF staffer trains builders.
f Bamboo huts are erected on school grounds
to demonstrate that safe building techniques can
be applied at home as well. Here, an example
in Myanmar
p A full-size mock-up of a strengthened roof is
transported throughout neighboring communes
to showsafe construction techniques.
pp Opening ceremony for a newstrengthened
kindergarten facility in Myanmar
We offer training sessions in which nearly all the builders
in a commune learn about safer construction alongside
community leaders. This is the rst formal training many
builders have had.
259
September 26, destroyed 17,000 houses and 772 square
miles (2,000 sq. km) of cropland across ten provinces. Warmer
oceans have made storms more fierce worldwide. As the
typhoons become more frequent and ferocious, the country is
at increasing risk fromrising sea levels, which threaten 40 per-
cent of its land mass. As concern increases about the known
and unknown impact of climate change on coastal Vietnam,
a growing public is ready to listen to messages that help them
address the risks of adverse weather.
The Development Workshop project is above all commu-
nity-based. Its success is predicated on enabling communities
at the local level to take measures to reduce their own vulnera-
bility. In 2006, when houses and public buildings strengthened
by our methods performed extremely well during the deadly
Typhoon Xangsane, families were inspired to copy and apply
the Ten Key Points of safe building practice. Thua Thien Hu
province then issued an edict exhorting local authorities, provin-
cial services, and the general population to adopt our principles.
The government built demonstration houses in three different
geographical contexts and produced its own handbook. Support
at the provincial level has made it possible for us to train local
architects and engineers. Our strategy is intended to comple-
ment Vietnams very good, longstanding, broad national
approach to controlling floods by building dikes. Thus, we also
collaborate with the Provincial Committee for Flood and Storm
Control. An important result of this collaboration has been the
first interactive disaster website in Vietnam.
5
Information is
posted in real time: communes have access to official data on
storms and disasters as they happen and can contribute local
information as well. Where the local authorities are supportive
and are working with the population to reduce vulnerability on
several local fronts, communication campaigns are raising
awareness, while financial and administrative structures back
the process.
homes and thus offer a good way to expose parents to safe
construction techniques. These new, safe public buildings can
also serve as a refuge in times of disaster.
Our work in schools goes beyond making buildings safer.
DWF works with teachers and children to integrate the issues
of prevention into school curricula and involve children in risk
reduction. School activities include drawing and poetry compe-
titions on the theme of storm-resistant building. Children are a
big help because they share these ideas with their parents
and of course, they are the house-builders and home owners of
the future. Every year primary-school children performin a play
about the need to take action. The plays are videotaped so that
we can reach a larger audience. One is The Lazy Builder, about
a husband who is more interested in drink than safety, despite
the exhortations of his wife and daughter, and whose home is
destroyed by a typhoon. And in the traditional tale The Mountain
King against the Storm Genie, the mountain king triumphs over
the threat of typhoons.
The important role of children in communicating our message
is part of the bigger, sustained Prevent StormDamage cam-
paign, which aims to informand motivate the public. Repeated
and regular participatory activities, designed to raise aware-
ness, take our prevention message directly to the community.
Here we use any and all opportunites to attract attention and
gather a crowdfromloudspeakers to wireless FMtransmis-
sion. We make audiotapes about prevention. We use television,
posters, the press, and cartoon strips. We even organize activi-
ties that bring the communes together: boat races, soccer
matches, rock concerts, and puppet shows all get the message
across. Puppets shows in particular have great appeal, as tradi-
tional puppetry in Vietnamhas always been used to convey
social messages.
Vietnamtypically suffers some six typhoons a year, but in
2009 there were ten before the season was over. Ketsana, on
p Childs painting of a house blowing away
during a storm
pp The Mountain King against the Storm Genie,
a folktale reenacted by schoolchildren
s Boat races are part of raising awareness
ss A Chamand Man spectacle adapted to pro-
mote typhoon-disaster prevention
a A risk-reduction slogan on a chin strap
Vietnam typically suffers some six typhoons
a year, but in 2009 there were ten before the
season was over.
261
4 In projects in 198992 DW had incorporated typhoon-resistant construction
details in public buildings in what later became Thua Thien Hu province and in
other provinces farther north (Quang Binh, Quang Tri, and Thanh Hoa).
5 http://www.ccfsc.gov.vn/KW367A21/Home-page.aspx.
6 DWF received the World Habitat Award in 2008 and the Sasakawa Award
Certificate of Distinction fromthe United Nations International Strategy for
Disaster Reduction organization (UNISDR) in 2009.
7 Margareta Wahlstrm, Special Representative of the UNSecretary General for
Disaster Risk Reduction, quoted in a press release, United Nations International
Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat (UNISDR), January 22, 2010, posted
at www.unisdr.org/news/v.php?id=12398, accessed August 18, 2010.
cheaper than repeatedly rebuilding ones damaged or destroyed
house, and much safer than risking ones life.
Today, in the wake of an exceptionally lethal earthquake in
Haiti, the UNis calling for long-termmeasures to rebuild the
island more safely. Hopefully, declared an official, no new
hospital, school, or public structure will be built without inte-
grating disaster risk reduction principles into its design and
construction. Disaster-risk reduction is the best investment that
nations and communities can make to reduce future disaster
impacts and protect their people and assets.
7
Only time will
tell whether her hope will be realized. Extreme poverty still
limits the opportunity for poor families to make their homes
safer or, indeed, their lives better. In the meantime Development
Workshop will continue to demonstrate through practical
action that the very poor can and, with minimal help, will step
forward to protect themselves.
Notes
1 Development Workshop France is a French nonprofit organization, one of a
group of NGOs originally founded as Development Workshop (DW) in London,
UK, in 1973. Our first projects in Vietnambegan in 1989; the current program
promoting disaster-resistant construction methods began at the end of 1999
and continues today.
2 Costs are difficult to quantify in western terms, but a typical Vietnamese family
might earn $50 a month (a single individual $12), and the cost of a newhouse
might be in the range of $2,000an astronomical sum.
3 These points were developed and tested by DWF in 198991 in consortium
with the Groupe dEchange et de Recherche Technologiques (GRET) of the
United Nations Development Programme/United Nations Centre for Human
Settlements (UN-Habitat), programVIE/85/019, Demonstration of Typhoon
Resistant Building Techniques. DWFs current programis supported by the
European Commission on Humanitarian Aid, the Canadian International
Development Agency (CIDA), the Ford Foundation, and local contributions.
Myanmar. Some details were revisedfor example, to address
local pole-and-bamboo construction techniques. In the ensu-
ing project several hundred schools, as well as early
child-development centers and newhomes, were strength-
ened to resist the impact of storms and cyclones.
The programwas systematic: first, engineers fromMyanmar
trained in our office in Thua Thien Hu; they then identified
target villages, assessed buildings, ordered materials, and
trained local builders and residents. As in Vietnam, the first
task was to retrofit the most fragile buildingsin this case
schools. To date, work has been carried out entirely in schools
hurriedly rebuilt after Nargis, not one of which included a single
feature that would resist a future cyclone. In addition we built a
small bamboo-frame house, about 10 by 10 feet (3 by 3 m),
on a school playground to make it clear to parents that the Ten
Key Points can be applied to any rural home. Some of our
schools have already stood up to fierce whirlwinds, convincing
residents that, indeed, they are safer. Families also unani-
mously consider our model of a reinforced-bamboo house an
extremely good example of howto make their own homes
storm-resistant. People have quickly grasped the principles of
safe construction. We held dozens of one-day workshops in
the villages, and although some people said they had already
known something about safe building practices, this was the
first time that they received information in a systematic
manner. Many beneficiaries learned the key points by heart.
One of the shared lessons fromour experience in Vietnam
and Myanmar is that principles of safe, storm-resistant construc-
tion can be quickly and easily transferred to newcommunities
precisely because they can be adapted to any local construc-
tion technique. To our way of thinking it is critical to work with a
relevant set of principles that are easy to assimilate, adaptable
to any local context, and effective. Preventive strengthening is
not free, and families are put off by this, but prevention is much
EXPORTING THE TEN KEY POINTS
In Vietnamthe work we have done to prevent and limit destruc-
tion has stood up well. In nearby Quang Namprovince during
Typhoon Ketsana the buildings strengthened using our system
served as refuges for the most fragile communities. Recent
typhoons are the best test. After one such stormtwo similar
buildings stood side by side: one, with its distinctive DWF bars
on the roof, tying down the covering, remained intact; the other
was a roofless shell, virtually blown away. People have taken
notice. Now, after more than two decades of incremental work,
careful coordination with the existing political structure, and
development of a reputation for probity, our programis
expanding into newprovinces. Make no mistake: this is in large
part because the concept is simple and easy to export.
In spite of our successes our work in Thua Thien Hu prov-
ince is not enough, on its own, to redress the degree of
vulnerability people face in central Vietnam. We are a good
model of what can be achieved, and we have managed to influ-
ence decision makers; we have even been recognized
internationally.
6
But so much more has to be done. Exporting
safe principles (and the myriad ways to reinforce them) to
other provinces and regions is critical if we are to have an
impact in Southeast Asia, where the cycle of weather-related
destruction is accelerating.
In May 2008 Cyclone Nargis hit the delta region of southern
Myanmar; 800,000 houses were destroyed, along with 4,000
schools and public buildings. The NGOSave the Children, well-
established there since 1995, was familiar with our work in
Vietnamand invited a team, including Vietnamese staff, to
come and see howwe might adapt our process to local condi-
tions. Together we developed the Safer School program,
based on our Ten Key Points, and produced a version of the
posters in Myanma Bhasa, the official and primary language of
263